Its Summer! Time To Go Camping With Your Dad And His Friends!

You are one teenager. You are sitting quietly, thinking of the end of civilization, when suddenly you find yourself near the whereabouts of your dad. “Let’s go camping,” says your dad. “It’s the hot month of Summer and you need to become an adult! Nothing turns a teenaged nothing into a middle-aged everything quite like a trip to the woods with an adult dad like me. Come live in a tent with me and I’ll teach you how to be a grown-up.”

You get in your dad’s camping truck, which he won in a raffle during his religion.

“Before we go camping, we’ve got to pick up my friends,” says your dad. “They are called the Friends of Dad, because they’re my friends and I’m your dad. Each one is an expert in one of the three Pillars of Adulthood: Romance, Ghost Stories, and Treasure Hunting.”

Your dad screams with rage. It is the kind of wordless, furious shriek that a dad makes when his child refuses to become an adult in the woods. “What, are you going to be an adolescent salad of shynesses your entire life? That’s poroporsterorosonesstouss!” Your dad loves to say “preposterous,” but he doesn’t really know how to pronounce it.

“My first friend is named Don Suave. He’s the ever-sexual King of Kiss, and he can teach you how to ask your crush out on a date.”

“Here I am,” says Don Suave. “Look how romantic I am.” He kisses himself on the back of his hand and a beautiful, thorn-studded rose grows out of his skin where he’s kissed himself. “It’s incredibly painful every time,” says Don Suave.

Don Suave climbs into the back seat of your dad’s camping truck and you drive off to pick up your dad’s next friend.

“My second friend is named Bathrobe Samuel,” says your dad. “His parents named him Bathrobe Samuel because when he was born his name was Samuel and he is always wearing a bathrobe. Bathrobe Samuel is a master of ghost legends and he will teach you to listen to a scary story without screaming, which is the adult way to be afraid.”

“Here I am,” says Bathrobe Samuel. “I get my ideas for scary stories from the index cards I find every morning in the pockets of my robe. I don’t know who puts the index cards in there, but the stories written on them are horrifying.” He climbs into the backseat of your dad’s camping truck and you drive on to pick up the next friend.

“My third friend is named Bean Bagg. He’s a master treasure hunter and he will teach you to discover jewels in caves,” says your dad. “It’s great that he’s coming camping with us because he will teach you to become a master treasure hunter.”

“Here I am,” says Bean Bagg. “I’m going to teach you how to find Tylenol in the woods that you can trade in for sandals at the Tylenol-4-Sandalz X-Change. The secrets I teach you will make you old.”

Don Suave and Bathrobe Samuel clap their hands as Bean Bagg joins them in the backseat of your dad’s camping truck. That’s all of your dad’s friends! Now it’s time to head to the woods.

You fall asleep and have a dream about a piece of paper. When you wake up, you are in the woods.

“Let the camping begin!” says your dad. “The first thing all serious campers do is pitch a tent. You know how to pitch a tent, don’t you?”

“It’s okay that you don’t know how to pitch a tent,” says your dad. “It’s an adult thing to admit when you don’t know something. My own father used to say to me, ‘Son, I don’t know a single goddamned thing. Every day I have to pay a man to explain to me what eating is. Every time I blink, I think I’ve died for half of a second. I’m wildly stupid.’ He was the most adult person I ever met. Prepare to learn how to pitch a tent.”

“The steps for pitching a tent are:

1. Gather twigs.2. Put twigs into pile.3. Find a buffalo that deserves to die, and then skin the evil buffalo.4. Drape bad buffalo’s skin over twigs.

Did you get all that?”

You look around for a tent that’s already been set up and find one immediately.

“Yes, I will repeat it. The steps for pitching a tent are:

1. Gather twigs.2. Put twigs into pile.3. Find a buffalo that deserves to die, and then skin the evil buffalo.4. Drape bad buffalo’s skin over twigs.

Did you get all that?”

You wander off into the woods to find the supplies you need to pitch a tent. The first thing you’ll need is some twigs. You hear someone in the eastern part of the woods yelling, “I love my twigs! I love my twigs!”

You hear someone in the western part of the woods yelling, “I hate my logs! I cannot stand the logs I’ve got!”

From the south, you can hear the sound of something weird and quiet happening.

You leave whatever horrible nonsense that was and return to the path. You hear someone in the eastern part of the woods yelling, “I love my twigs! I love my twigs!”

You hear someone in the western part of the woods yelling, “I hate my logs! I cannot stand the logs I’ve got!”

From the south, you can still hear the sound of that fucked up shit going on.

You travel south and see this thing. Whatever this is, it is clearly bad and weird. You should probably go somewhere else.

This continues to be seriously fucked up. This is not something you should be looking at.

This is not a thing that it’s okay to like. Seriously… you should go back before you become completely entranced by this sick and seriously fucked nonsense.

Hm…

Ah…

Well, good going. You got thoroughly hypnotized by this bullshit and now you can’t look away. Looking at this is probably going to make your brain larger and flatter, which is the shape of people’s brains when the are incoherent and dangerous.

You didn’t become an adult. You became a hypnotized loon. You blew it.

The End

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You travel east and discover a man smiling at a bunch of twigs that he’s holding. “I love my twigs!” he yells at his twigs. “My twigs are my life!”

“Well, I don’t know. My twigs are pretty amazing, and I love them. What will you give me in return for my wonderful twigs?”

“You know, ever since I was a little kid, I’ve been fascinated by the ground,” says the man. “I think a book about the ground would be an incredible way for me to discover the mysteries of the ground and the riddles of the dirt. I would gladly trade you my fabulous twigs in exchange for a book about the ground.”

“Some of a car? That’s almost all of a car!” says the man. “I would definitely trade you my incredible twigs for some of a car.”

“Wow! A map to a boot!” says the man. “This is extremely good, because I will be able to follow the map and find the boot somewhere in the wilderness. I can go to alcohol restaurants and say to ladies, ‘Hey, baby, I know where there is a boot somewhere out in nature,’ and this will make the ladies want to go to the movies with me! I would gladly trade you my twigs for this map to a boot. Thank you!

You give the man what you promised him and he hands you the twigs. All right, you’ve got your twigs and you’ve wandered deeper than ever into the forest. The next thing you need is to find an evil buffalo who it is ethical to skin.

You steal the man’s twigs and sprint away into the forest.

“My twigs!” screams the man. “I’m lost without them! I’ll never smile again!” You can hear him sobbing as you spring through the woods.

All right, you’ve got your twigs. The next thing you need is to find an evil buffalo who it is ethical to skin.

You spin around in a circle until you see a buffalo. There is a buffalo.

You check the Encyclopedia of Known Buffalos and look up the buffalo that’s right in front of you. According to the encyclopedia, he’s a good buffalo. He donated $10 to UNICEF in 1999. You’ll have to find a more evil buffalo to kill.

You keep spinning around until you find a new buffalo.

You check the Encyclopedia of Known Buffalos and look up the buffalo that’s right in front of you. According to the encyclopedia, he’s a bad buffalo. He once kissed a sign that said “graffiti” on it. This is a rotten-souled buffalo who deserves to die. How would you like to kill the bad buffalo?

You decide to wait patiently for the evil buffalo to die of old age. You sit quietly and wait.

The buffalo has died of old age. It’s time to harvest his skin.

Like the Native Americans of old, you use every part of the buffalo. You use the buffalo’s skin to make a tent and you use the rest of the buffalo to poison the reservoir.

All right. You’ve killed the buffalo. Now you have all the components necessary to pitch a tent.

You reach into your camper’s satchel and pull out beloved music legend Sting. “I was in The Police, but then I went solo,” Sting says to you. You find a big cauldron of poison that somebody left in the forest and you dip Sting into it. Sting smiles at you as he sits in the cauldron and lets the poison get all over him. “I’m becoming toxic to eat,” says Sting.

Sting is now all covered in poison. It’s time to feed him to the bad buffalo.

You toss poisonous Sting in front of the bad buffalo and the bad buffalo devours him immediately. He becomes dead very soon after this, because of the poison.

Like the Native Americans of old, you use every part of the buffalo. You use the buffalo’s skin to make a tent and you use the rest of the buffalo to poison the reservoir.

All right. You’ve killed the buffalo. Now you have all the components necessary to pitch a tent.

You decide to kill the bad buffalo by telling him about Heaven, where there is a wrench. You tell the buffalo that in Heaven, the wrench in lying around and the angels look at the wrench and say, “Whose wrench is this?” and nobody answers because nobody knows.

The bad buffalo is so excited to see the wrench in Heaven that he makes his liver explode so that he will immediately die. In this way, you have killed the bad buffalo.

Like the Native Americans of old, you use every part of the buffalo. You use the buffalo’s skin to make a tent and you use the rest of the buffalo to poison the reservoir.

All right. You’ve killed the buffalo. Now you have all the components necessary to pitch a tent.

You return to the campsite and pitch the tent. You put the twigs in a pile and drape the bad buffalo’s skin over the pile of twigs, just like your dad taught you. That’s it! You’ve pitched the tent!

You blow up the buffalo with an airstrike from the U.S. Air Force. Unfortunately, it turns out that this was a good buffalo who donated $10 to UNICEF in 1999, so it was illegal to kill him. You should have checked beforehand, because now you have to go to jail.

For the crime of poaching a morally conscious buffalo, you are sentenced to life in prison. By sheer luck, your cellmate is none other than the infamous Son of Sam, the serial killer who liked to let a dog boss him around.

“Hello,” says Son of Sam. “I know that I am very scary to you because I used to kill a lot of people, but there is no need to worry. I will not kill you unless a dog tells me to. If a dog told me to kill you, I would have to do it, because that seems fair to me. But that’s the only reason I would ever do it. We are going to become best friends, unless a dog gets in here and tells me to kill you, in which case, again, I’ll have to listen to the dog. Anyway, nice to meet you.”

You remain in prison for the rest of your life. No dogs tell Son of Sam to kill you, so he doesn’t. One time a police dog tells Son of Sam to call you “Beverly” even though this is not your name. Son of Sam obeys the dog without question and he calls you Beverly for the rest of your life.

The End

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You walk west and discover a man in the woods holding a bunch of logs.

“I hate my logs,” the man says to you. “My logs are trash. Every night I bury my terrible logs in the dirt, and every morning I wake up and the logs are back in my bed with me. I wish I could get rid of these logs.”

“No, they are logs. And I hate them.”

“I hate my logs because I once dropped my logs onto a piano keyboard and it made a horrible sound that scared my wife so much that she sprinted away into the desert and I never saw her again.”

“Yes. My logs are the bane of my existence. Every day I pray to God that He will send an angel to come to my tent and carry my logs away from me, but instead, every morning an angel comes down from Heaven and gives me a new log.”

“Goodbye.”

Incredible. The tent is complete. Your dad and his friends all climb in and start whispering the word “camping” to one another. It’s time to get started learning how to be an adult in the woods. In order to become an adult, you will need to master the three Pillars of Adulthood and then join your dad for the Gauntlet of Ultimate Maturity.

What would you like to do first?

You return to the tent. You dad’s friends are all milling around the campsite enjoying nature and filling their lungs with gnats.

What would you like to do now?

Now that you are a master of Romance, you return to the tent. You dad’s friends are all milling around the campsite enjoying nature. They have trained a cloud of gnats to form the shape of a man, and the gnat-cloud man is running around the tent while your dad’s friends chase after him and try to convert him to Christianity.